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Saturday, 25 May 2013

Carolina Lily and trapunto quilts

Three rows sewn together ( the ugly seams between blocks won't show through once batting layer is in place behind )

Top three rows

Just a reminder - here is the Quiltmania pattern photo of the original quilt :

The original was quilted with wreaths in each of the plain blocks, and cross hatching elsewhere. I'm thinking this might be enhanced with some trapunto in the wreaths.

I have done a little trapunto in the past. Here is my small sample quilt made in a machine trapunto class a few years ago with Deborah Louie:

I wanted to practise more at the time, so I thought I'd try in a wall quilt. I was very keen on "blended" quilts then (where piecing blends together) but unfortunately all the work of the trapunto doesn't exactly stand out on a blended quilt! It just ... blends.

The blended quilt hanging in my bedroom

Here are some photos of the quilt in better light that shows the trapunto quilted floral chains:

All that trapunto makes for a rather stiff board of a quilt - nothing cuddly about this one! But it is fine as a wall hanging.

The back of the quilt

That was machine trapunto. A good demonstration of this method is shown in Kathy Wylie's blog. It is a very different process to hand trapunto.

If I was to do machine trapunto on my Carolina Lily quilt I'd need do the first quilting/batting stage now, before the quilt is sandwiched together. Then I'd have to machine quilt all the wreaths again in the second quilting stage, once it was all sandwiched. Sounds like a lot of machine quilting..... ?

So I considered hand trapunto - have never done this but think it looks lovely. I had a look at Tim Latimer's hand trapunto video - a great demo. I might do this - hand threading the yarn into the back of the quilt (on the wreaths) once the machine quilting is finished. The advantage is less time at the machine (which I don't enjoy much) and more time sitting with handwork (which I do enjoy much)! You can also control how much stuffing is used - I don't want it too stiff this time.

Ideally I would hand quilt the whole thing but my arthritis does not allow that. Hopefully it will cooperate with the trapunto yarn threading :)

14 comments:

Your Lilies look beautiful!! I love to see your progress. :0) I really like the trapunto in your blended quilt. it is subtle but the texture is fabulous! I have yet to give trapunto a try but I will... one day... For now I just dream about it as I look through books of antique quilts.

You're making great progress with the lillies, you'll be working on those beautiful borders in no time. Good luck with the trapunto it should really enhance those white spaces. Sorry to hear about your arthritis :(